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The Information Deficit Model Is Dead. Now What? Evaluating New The Information Deficit Model is Dead. Now What? Evaluating New Strategies for Communicating Anthropogenic Climate Change in the Context of Contemporary American Politics, Economy, and Culture by Paul McDivitt B.A., College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, 2011 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Journalism and Mass Communication 2016 Signature Page This thesis entitled: The Information Deficit Model is Dead. Now What? Evaluating New Strategies for Communicating Anthropogenic Climate Change in the Context of Contemporary American Politics, Economy, and Culture written by Paul McDivitt has been approved for the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication ____________________________________ (committee chair) ____________________________________ (committee member) ____________________________________ (committee member) Date __________________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. ii Abstract McDivitt, Paul (M.A., Journalism and Mass Communication) The Information Deficit Model is Dead. Now What? Evaluating New Strategies for Communicating Anthropogenic Climate Change in the Context of Contemporary American Politics, Economy, and Culture Thesis directed by Professor Michael Tracey Social science researchers studying the public controversy over Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) in the United States have convincingly argued that the “Information Deficit Model” (IDM), which assumes that the public needs more and better information, represents an insufficient strategy for communicating the science and risks of, and solutions to, ACC. Instead, these researchers propose alternative strategies, under the umbrella of what has been called the “contextual model.” These strategies attempt to incorporate social context — in the form of culturally resonant messages, frames, and other rhetorical devices — into communication with the public. Several researchers have even developed rigorous experimental methodologies to test the efficacy of these strategies, dubbing this burgeoning field the “science of science communication.” This thesis reviews a variety of social science research showing that ACC communication researchers underestimate the challenge of implementing contextual model strategies outside of a lab setting, especially at the scales necessary for significant shifts in public opinion and meaningful changes in public policy. This is due primarily to the fragmented, polarized, and highly contested spaces of contemporary American culture, politics, and economics within which communication occurs, as well as the unequal distribution of power within these complex systems. iii Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………….....1 Part One: The Information Deficit Model is Dead………………………….10 Now What? New Strategies for Communicating ACC………….….21 Part Two: Cultural, Media, and Political Challenges and Barriers to Implementation……………………………………………………………...36 Cultural Challenges and Barriers……………………………………37 Media Challenges and Barriers……………………………………...41 Political Challenges and Barriers……………………………………51 Part Three: The Climate Wars…………………………………....………….81 Part Four: Realistic Expectations and Alternative Strategies………………..96 Bibliography…………………………………………………………...…….105 iv Introduction The questions of whether Earth’s climate is warming, and, if it is, whether human activity is the primary cause, have been hotly debated among United States politicians, journalists, and members of the public since National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist James Hansen brought the issue to the attention of the American public in the summer of 1988. He famously declared on the Senate floor: “it is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here” ( Shabecoff 1988 ). In the same year the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to bring together the world’s top climate scientists to evaluate the relevant scientific literature and determine the current state of scientific knowledge on human-induced warming ( IPCC website 2015 ). The IPCC issued its first report in 1990. Writing in their 2010 book “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming,” science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway note that a scientific consensus on anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change (ACC) coalesced soon after: As early as 1995, the leading international organization on climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had concluded that human activities were affecting global climate. By 2001, IPCC’s Third Assessment Report stated that the evidence was strong and getting stronger, and in 2007, the Fourth Assessment called global warming ‘unequivocal.’ Major scientific organizations and prominent scientists around the globe have repeatedly ratified the IPCC conclusion. Today, all but a tiny handful of climate scientists are convinced that Earth’s climate is heating up, and that human activities are the dominant cause” ( Oreskes & Conway 2010 ). 1 The IPCC’s most recent report, the Fifth Assessment Report, was issued in 2013 and again states that global warming is “unequivocal,” and with 95 percent certainty, that human activity is the “dominant cause” of recorded warming ( IPCC 2013 ). The IPCC defines 95 percent certainty as “extremely likely,” though scientific statements are notoriously conservative, cloaked in the language of uncertainty. National Center For Atmospheric Research climatologist Kevin Trenberth argues that “the estimates suggest that any natural variability has, if anything, worked against the warming” ( The State of the Science 2014 ). The IPCC’s conclusions have been endorsed by prestigious scientific organizations from around the world, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society ( NASA website 2015 ). In 2006, the AAAS concluded: “the scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now” ( AAAS 2006 ). In 2012, the American Meteorological Society summarized: “it is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases” ( AMS 2012 ). Even some of the IPCC’s critics have come to its defense, and the defense of the concept of “scientific consensus” in general, as both have come under attack in the public controversy over ACC. In his 2009 book, “Why We Disagree About Climate Change,” Mike Hulme writes: Such scientific consensus is not ultimate ‘truth’ and, on occasion, may turn out to be wrong. But the alternatives to the IPCC style of consensus-building are even less likely to command widespread authority within the worlds of science and policy. Vastly better [than random solicitation of views] is the work of groups such as the IPCC … which although slow, 2 deliberative, sometimes elitist and occasionally dominated by strong personalities, are nonetheless the best representation of the scientific community’s current general opinion (Hulme 2009 ). Statistician Nate Silver, writing in his 2012 book “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t” agrees: “many of these debates turn on a misunderstanding of the term. In formal usage, consensus is not synonymous with unanimity — nor with having achieved a simple majority. Instead, consensus connotes broad agreement after a process of deliberation , during which most members of a group coalesce around a particular idea or alternative” (Silver 2012 ). Several quantitative studies back up the notion of a strong scientific consensus on the basic tenets of ACC, both among the global community of climate scientists and their published, peer-reviewed work on the subject. In 2004, Oreskes conducted a study that surveyed a sample of 928 published papers that mentioned “climate change” in an attempt to find out how many agreed and disagreed with the IPCC consensus that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” ( Oreskes 2004 ). She was unable to find a single paper which disagreed with the IPCC consensus position. Oreskes concluded: “this analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.” In 2010, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that “97–98 percent of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field ... support the tenets of ACC outlined by the 3 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” ( Anderegg et al 2010 ). The study also found that the two to three percent of researchers who were unconvinced of ACC had lower levels of climate expertise
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